tevid

Desolace I can understand, but from what I recall both Tanaris and Ungoro give you quite a large selection of quests. However correct me, if I'm wrong and what would you suggest instead?

 

Hughes

The XP changes are pretty much an excellent reason to skip whatever zone you don't like. I personally despise STV (It's gank central on my server, very difficult to complete even a single quest without getting interrupted), and I was able to skip it entirely on my latest alt session.

The changes to Dustwallow make it an excellent quest hub, it's worth at least 2-3 levels. Also - Feralas as Alliance is amazing now, I was pushing 100K XP/hr unrested there. Tanaris was very good too.

 

◊ Cowbell

I don't even agree with Desolace being bad -- with a good quest plan and path (and your hearth in Shadowprey/Nijel's) that zone can be done in an hour or two. Un'goro and Tanaris are awesome as well. Even if you don't want to use a guide, using something like nQuestLog > Lightheaded > Cartographer (with waypoint icons turned on) to plot out all of your quests and then just basically follow the marks makes any zone stupidly fast.

 

Havelcek

Well its definitely a "your mileage may vary" type of thing but I've always disliked UnGoro due to the extra travel times and annoying roaming mobs and whatnot. Unlike the poster above me I actually like STV for alliance, particularly due to the new Rebel Camp flightpath which makes the whole zone work much more efficiently from a questing perspective. As I mentioned, I just hit 60 with a pally alt and I did the following zones (roughly):

Elwynn Forest
Redridge
Duskwood
Arathi Highlands
Alterac Mtns
Hillsbrad
STV
All of Theramore and Dustwallow Marsh
Hinterlands (do all quests here, this zone is easy now)
first round of Shimmering Flats quests
most of Feralas but got very tired of travelling
only Desolace pre-reqs for Mauradon
some Tanaris (pre-reqs for instances)
some Badlands (pre-reqs for instances)
some Burning Steppes (pre-reqs for instances)
some Searing Gorge (pre-reqs for instances)
southern Felwood
Azshara
WPL
EPL

Instances:
Deadmines (few times)
Gnomeregan (just once, still a pain)
SM (couple times)
Uldaman (once, very easy now)
Mauradon (once)
ST (once)
BRD (full quest clear)
Scholo (full quest clear)
Strat (couple of quests)


Completely skipped:
Wetlands
Swamp of Sorrow
UnGoro
Winterspring
Northern Felwood
Blasted Lands

 

Hugha

Please do tell about this armor turn its, my alt just dinged 52 and that sounds near the right level. What do I need to get?

 

Thelyna

Havelcek: Desolace is 30-40, Tanaris is 40-50, Ungoro is 48-55. Going to Tanaris isn't a good replacement for Desolace.

A lot of people hating on Desolace probably just hate the hike out there, or don't know where all the quests are. If you do it right you can do the entire zone in two loops and get 2+ levels out of it (assuming you start at 32, any lower and you might struggle at the end).

DeeNogger: "No dot timer? Get your belt off, its spanking time."

 

• Leene

What you need to do is take a look at these five quests, all from Light's Hope Chapel:
Bonescythe Digs
Cryptstalker Armor Doesn't Make Itself...
Savage Flora
The Elemental Equation
Binding the Dreadnaught

Either buy the items needed (30 of each) of the auction house or go farm them yourself. They shouldn't be that expensive in the first place and it might be more efficient to not bother farming for them and go do other quests instead.

 

Fqubed

Its required level 55 to do the, but if you have them on hand it does help a good bit: its 30 savage fronds, bone fragments, crypt fiend parts, core of elements, dark iron scraps. its 50k exp unless I'm missing one.

wowhead-bonscythe digs
wowhead-cryptstalker...
wowhead-savage flore
wowhead-core of elements
wowhead-dark iron scraps

 

◊ vorpalblade

[EDIT- ^^ What they said. Apparently I'm the slow one.]

 

Calantus

I skipped stonetalon, desolace, swamp of sorrows, and blasted lands on my way up this time. Why? I just don't like them (and yes I know all the quests). I think that's the best part of the XP changes. Before you'd have to go to every damn zone whether you liked it or not and still have to grind some.

 

Liebestod

Desolace is more convenient for Horde than Alliance imo. Not only do Allies have the base at the North end of the map while most of the high-level quests are at the south end (which are nice to do if you go back in the early 40s), but it's simply impossible to clear the zone in two loops, as the Kartinol Shipwreck chain alone (assuming you even get it) requires three trips out from Nijel's Point.

Anyways, on my latest (Alliance) alt (now my main), I tried to do avoid powerleveling as much as possible and ended up with a 1-70 time of just under 5 days /played. The only mid-level zones (20-50) that I really skipped was Stonetalon Mountains and Azshara, though tbh Desolace might not have been bad to skip as well (SoS really isn't that bad if you can avoid minimizing the number of trips you take across it, and Blasted Lands is very nice especially if you can do the first parts of the Fallen Hero chain which reward outrageous amounts of exp.) I ended up not really touching Winterspring, Silithus, and much of the Plaguelands were unfinished when I moved to HFP.

I'm pretty sure a good argument could be made that Druids are one of the faster if not the fastest soloing class, for reasons such as but not limited to:

- Stealth
- Early run speed bonuses (30% for feral druids at 20/21, 40% at level 30)
- Ability to roots spam elites to death when necessary (this doesn't work so well in Outland however)
- For feral, generally good DPS with little downtime
- Moonglade teleport. I think it helps out Alliance Druids more since it provides quick access to northern Kalimdor at an early level (Allies have a Moonglade -> Auberdine fp, Horde don't have any low-level Moonglade -> _____ fps except for Thunder Bluff, which isn't that great..)
- Flight form at 68

There are probably some more things I can think of, but yea. Suck it hunters.

 

Pyros

While I agree, druids are pretty slow to "take-off" in terms of killing speed. You spend the first 20levels killing stuff rather slowly(less so with haste twink gear I guess), then you get catform but it still sucks until 26 when you get ravage, which somewhat sucks anyway. It takes some more time to get the good talents to use pounce efficiently(shred cost talent), and it only really starts shining at 50 when you get mangle. During that mean time, hunters, while running a tad slower(35%talented at lvl 20) just kill much faster for these levels, and are even less gear dependant. Starting 50 tho, you get rolling with imp lotp pretty much healing all the damage from questing and mangle doing insane dps even with shitty gear. Once you get to outlands and get your hands on feral weapons, it's even better and it's a really good class to level.

So I'd say hunter is still the best leveling class without much twinking and whatnot. Warlocks are also a nice choice, and druids are definitely not far if you can live thru the early stuff.

 

xiaoxin21

I leveled both a druid and a shaman before and I would say that a enhancement shaman is way faster to level than a druid.

Shaman have

1)15 mins hearth
2)shocks(good for caster mobs to counterspell them)
3)reincarnation
4)totems like earthbind/stoneclaw for running away
5)ghostwolf

It can kill mobs fast from 1-40 with a big twohander but really speeds up more once you reach 40+, have stormstrike and 2 good weapons. A lucky windfury crit means mobs could die in 3 hits. It has most of the advantages of druid but kills much faster.

 

TheCutlery

I got my new tankadin to 42, and I managed to skip the barrens entirely. Never been to the crossroads, I went to ashenvale by running out the west entrance of OG and heading north. I hit RFK/RFD by porting him to TB and running to Taurajo, then down to open Brackenwall village, and finally thousand needles. His Barrens map is still completely unexplored except for everything south of the road to Dustwallow. The barrens can die in a fire, I hate that goddamned place now on the 10th time through. I've skipped the Barrens, Stonetalon, 1k Needles, STV and the Swamp so far, and I'm pretty sure I can manage to not waste time on Tanaris too. Pretty easy to avoid the heavy PvP/ganking zones now, and only deal with the random scrub who's easily discouraged.

 

• moz

Honestly, given the XP changes and the PvP quests available (+dailies) you won't even get to do plaguelands/burning steppes before you hit 58 and can do outlands. Leveling is a joke now.

 

Octaviann

The discussion about shaman and druid being fast to level makes me happy, since those are probably the next 2 classes I'm going to play after I finish my rogue to 70. Since this rogue is my first character, I'm still not very fast leveling and I'm wondering when the best time to go to outlands is without any help from friends. I've heard 3 different opinions and I'm not sure what to do:
1) Go to outlands at 58 and stay.
2) Go to outland at 58, get awesome gear, then go back to Azeroth for a few levels when you have awesome gear from outland.
3) Stay in Azeroth until 60

Since I already went to outland from 58-59, my options are limited to 1 & 2. What should I do?

If this doesn't directly pertain to this discussion, feel free to ignore/delete it.

 

seminarca

I've leveled a fair few characters (Druid, Hunter, Rogue, Warrior, Shaman). Shamans are an absolute blast to level once you get the Windfury/dualwield combo going, although it's a huge pain whilst still using a 2h due to the randomness.

Even though Rogues will outdps Enhancement at endgame (and Feral is mildly competitive at best), the reason Enhancement dominates grinding so much is the simple lack of ramp up time. Rogue needs to build cp and settle into an SnD/Rupture cycle to produce maximum DPS, Druid is also plagued by the cp > Rip cycle issue. You simply don't have the time to do this on leveling mobs, they die too fast, and target switching sucks due to loss of cp. Whereas, 70-80% of Enhancement's DPS comes from simply autoattacking & Windfury procs (the rest being Stormstrike and Shocks). Enhancement DPS is an on/off switch, and you can target something new and unload at top, or near-top, DPS pretty much immediately.

I assume Warriors are similar, in that they don't have as huge a ramp up time aside from building Rage on initial contact. Although my experiences with Warrior leveling are skewed due to leveling with a Paladin friend, where we just overpulled and [Cleave/Sweeping Strikes/Consecrate]'d our way to victory. I don't know how well Fury fares, but I'm familiar with the horror stories of solo Warrior leveling, I went from 1-35 solo and only started pairing with the Paladin after this.

Anyway, this is getting offtopic.

I have no tips or tricks of my own to share. But I don't agree with setting hearth to Shatt, either before or after level 40. Lots of potential time can be saved hearthing back to your quest hub, and it more than makes up for having to spend more time on the once every 2 levels trip to a capital city for new skills (sometimes every 4 levels if there's nothing useful).

 

Oafijev

Funny you should bring this up, I went through exactly the same dilemma myself and I've tried all 3 of your suggestions. Maybe it's because it's what I'm doing at the moment, but I now strongly prefer 2) to the other options.

My alt-of-the-moment is a Shaman and when I hit 58, I looked up about 6 or 7 quests from early Hellfire that gave huge upgrades and did them. Then I went back to Azeroth and am cleaning up with the gear upgrades (I probably could have bought more upgrades off AH but I'm also cheap). She's now lvl 60 with Winterspring, WPL, EPL, BS and Silithus untouched, and I should be able to blitz through those pretty quickly with Outland gear. I prefer being a few levels above the intended level when I do quests and I can always stay above the quest levels by delaying the hop to Outlands. As an enhancement shaman specifically, you can absolutely destroy mobs that are a few levels lower than you even with pretty crappy gear.

The general plan is to try to hit 70 in either Nagrand or early in BEM while leaving SMV and Netherstorm untouched so that I can either do BEM/SMV/Netherstorm for gold, or do the same delay tactic next expansion. Delaying the hop to Outlands enables me to hit 70 earlier (without grinding) and "saves" those remaining quests for me to do something with later.

Of course, there's always personal preference - if you enjoy aoe grinding on a frost mage (for example), you can easily do that in HFP (your option 1) ).

 

Tanoh

Whenever I hit 58 with an alt I go to Outlands directly. I don't find the quests hard at all even as 58, and you get insane upgrades straight from the bat, and Hellfire is much more quest per square inch than places like Winterspring, WPL, EPL etc where you have to run around all over the map to get the quests. I'm not particularly concernd about running out of quests or saving zones for money. I rather do dailies frankly.

There are some really good rewards from the 2.3 revamp though, Words of the High Chief - Quests - World of Warcraft for example. That's the sole reason I'm doing Winterspring on my Warlock alt.


I agree with what someone said above, the best thing about 2.3 is that you can chose to ignore the zones you think are dull and boring. Before 2.3 you had to do all zones more or less to get by, now you can pick and chose, and you can ignore those annoying 0.000001% drop rate quests, if you like. Leveling my warlock alt has been the most fun leveling so far, apart from the initial TBC leveling of course.

 

kervi

If you're interested in fastest possible lvl70, I'd recommend plan 1

However, if you want to save as much quests as possible for lvl70 (make them at lvl70 for $$$), I'd recommend 2 or 4) Stay in azeroth until all quests with reasonable effort are done, then outlands.

As it has been said, stratholme, scholomance, BRD and possible some other instances like LBRS each reward you with ~2 levels without rested. Bribe some guildee to boost instance, and it's real fast xp.

Also using cloth donations reward you with some nice xp, runecloth is 9950xp and total per faction is around 20k xp (iirc)

 

Duilliath

I think it largely depends on class and gear.

Close contact classes without good gear do better hitting up level 60 in the Old World first. The mobs in outlands *hurt*.
If you're not getting hit anyway, that doesn't make a difference.

My Shaman dinged 68 the night before and has most of Terrokar and Nagrand left to go. But that's because I went nuts over the rep grind as I want to be able to make potions on her. And I'm a nutter that went 63-64 from grinding Furbolg rep solely. Grinding rep hand ins from Wild Elekks or Arakkaos or simply farming Boglords for some Sporeggar rep and herbs etc etc will easily see you hit 70 before you even get close to SMV/Netherstorm.

I say that I really think that any weapon based class will be outleveling druids till mid-30s. By then Druids have really picked up the pace and are essentially upgrading their weapons every single level to blue equivalent (base damage rises as they gain levels, up till 58 or thereabouts). I don't find combo points a big hassle on Druids to be honest - far less so than on Rogues. Don't wait till 5 combo points before using them. A 2-3 point Rip will last you till the mob dies and effectively pretty much doubles your DPS for the duration.

--

As to the Desolace comment - it was merely an example. One that I got to experience first hand yesterday when my Warlock alt hit up a Maraudon run. Hearthing + flying back + handing in the quest would've cost me bout half an hour. If that doesn't kill your xp/hr nothing will.
That, and after running three alts through the new Dustwallow Marsh hub, I get kind of sick n tired of it and don't mind doing something else for a change. I leveled primarly in Desolace pre 2.3 as STV is a huge gankathon on my server (Gankthorn Vale being the more common name for it) and it was a good spot to avoid all the roaming 60s.

 

cranks

One of the most powerful tools I have come across in my leveling (I quest a lot) is my mailbox. This is something I found when leveling my hunter who I'd send 50 stacks of arrows and 100 stacks of food and drink to on reaching a new level of food or ammunition (my main is parked near a vendor who happens to have most ranks of food and drink and a arrow vendor is nearby). This really worked for me as in most places there was a mail box and it saved me both time and room in my bag (one type of food rather than multiple stacks of different foods - some vendors don't have the type of food I would normally use so a new stack needed to be created, hence less space when compared to having one type of food or drink). I also never had to look for a vendor, except repairs, so after a quick visit to the local repairman and a stop at the mail box I was resupplied and ready to move onwards (small time savings add up).

I also bought or bidded on gear I thought might be good and, again, sent it to my alt. This was handy, as with some planning, I could gear up and continue questing when an upgrade became useable without having to visit the AH with my hunter (equaling less travel time and more level time).

I hope that helps a bit,

Cranks.

 

Havelcek

deleted....duplicate information

 

Parappa

i vote for 2. many people keep forgetting that all the old quest XP got buffed big time. even at lvl 64 quests in silithus still give you around 14k or something silly like that, and i think at one point i did about 5 of them in about 30 minutes. also stuff like the tirion fordring quest line is still decent in terms of xp, especially the first one which basically requires you to kill loads of mobs in epl. i just buffed up for it, took the quests from Nathanos Blightcaller and basically killed every single mob i saw in EPL for about an hour or two. think this alone basically took care of all of lvl 59 for me.

also stuff like doing a quest run in stratholme or scholo is amazing, same with doing the quests in LBRS and UBRS. we did onyxia attunement for fun and i just picked up all the quests along, got me loads of xp (close to 100k ?), just for a single run.

 

◊ Cowbell

I've never been the sort of person to have a bank alt, I never really saw the need for it if I had room on whatever character I happened to be leveling. This time around on my paladin I decided to copy my fiance and just mail everything to a bank alt after every session or when my bags got full to see how it went, and the difference is amazing. Stuff that you would normally vendor just to get rid of actually gets sold on the AH, and these days you can sell ANYTHING, especially any green BoE pre-50.

I never put a BoE green on the AH for less than 2g and it all sells. Anything at the twink levels (19, 29, etc) I put up for no less than 4g and in the case of "of the Eagle" and "of the Monkey" and occasionally "of the Tiger" gear it goes up for more. School specific spell damage gear also sells for high prices because someone who knows they should be using it will ALWAYS buy it. I have made (and kept!) 400g while leveling my paladin via skinning and green BoEs and letting it sit on my bank alt, and still have roughly 130g on my paladin from vendor trash, questing, etc. It's pretty amazing. I think this will be the first character I've leveled that will be able to afford their epic mount at 60 on their own.

Having a 70 mage that can make food/water for you is a huge money saver as well, especially for classes like shaman and paladin which seem to eat through them at a ridiculous pace. Once you hit 45/55 you can actually see the dent buying food/water is making in your pocket if you're playing a class that chews through them (tankadin, I'm looking at you).